I read the APC white paper on efficiency. It goes only part of the way toward improving efficiency.
We replaced a large group of not quite at end of life servers with some new Sun 5120 servers. Not only is there a huge performance gain, but after a month, there apparently will be a net cost saving across the next 3 years that covers the cost of the servers.
Server efficiency may return 3 year fuel savings that are larger than acquisition cost and difference in maintenance costs. The new servers are much lower in maintenance costs than the 3 year old servers they replaced.
I hate to sound like a shill for anyone, but I think SUN has the right idea with their coolthread servers.
I have long been in a hybrid environment and have noticed the electrical inefficiency of servers. Migrating to 5120’s running Apache may have long term benefits for the bottom line and the environment.